Tentacle-Free Anime: "Neo Yokio"(2017)

As Kaz Kaan would say: We don't deserve a big Toblerone. The world has been very scary lately and right now we need a light from within the darkness to show us a better way. Many of us look to our favorite entertainment shows in order to escape the hellish vortex between breakfast and dinner. Let alone the labyrinth of our everyday lives. Sadly, this is not one of those shows.​​

Summary: While attempting to distance himself from his demon-slaying past, Kaz Kaan, a wealthy magistocrat, is forced to question everything he knows about Neo Yokio. [Google Summary]

Neo Yokio is a strange, strange series. I'm not totally sure it's officially an anime despite having Japanese animation company's work on it since it was also co-produced by American studios, but that's not what makes it strange. No, there's something else with this show that I don't believe I've ever encountered quite on this level before.

​As a friend put it: Neo Yokio is not quite parody, but it's not quite serious either. It's just very surreal.

So what am I even talking about? Let me back up a bit.

Click to Enlarge

This is the brainchild of Ezra Koenig, a member of the Indie rock band Vampire Weekend. No, I'm not familiar with their work. It's an interesting fun fact because it is so very unusual for non-Japanese to get the opportunity to do something like this, let alone someone who runs a band that's maybe not quite mainstream. Although last year's Shelter was created by a DJ, but that was only a few minutes long and more like a music video.

Somehow though, Neo Yokio became a full blown series at 6 episodes. Featuring the voice talents of Jaden Smith, Jude Law, and Susan Sarandon among others. Big names attached to such a small project. Neo Yokio is an interesting story set in the city of the same name which is a riff on New York and Neo Tokyo, a reference to Akira. Unlike the dystopian future of Akira however, Neo Yokio is set in a thriving, high society where the young and wealthy compete to become the city's most eligible bachelor. Oh, and there's demon-slaying as well.

This isn't a very good show. And not because the premise isn't interesting. Anime takes normal society and adds little to big quirks here and there all the time, so what Neo Yokio attempts to blend is nothing new. It's not very good because it's lazy about how it does it. It's a lazy show that never truly commits to either serious drama or comedy and walks a surreal line of both where the jokes feel flat and out place and the drama feels forced and unrelatable.

I've watched plenty of anime about rich kids in predicaments and, depending on how strong the writing is, I can place myself in their shoes and understand where they are coming from with their pain. Relatability just means that you can relate to how their characters are feeling internally, even if you can't relate to their lifestyles. Unfortunately, Neo Yokio never lands with those relatable moments except in an episode where one of the characters is turned into a woman (a blatant Ranma ½ reference) and they're then able to relate to the misogyny men may willingly or unwittingly force upon women. I don't relate to that on a life experience level, but I can understand it on basic empathetic level.

They're called Tuxedo Masks, get it?!

Unfortunately, Neo Yokio never delves deep enough into any of these characters to feel truly sorry for them when something happens. The show literally opens with Kaz Kaan, our protagonist, lamenting about his girlfriend leaving him to become an Investment Banker in Los Angeles but, because of how the scene is written, the entire affair comes off as unrealistic. Probably because we're given too much information right off the bat, rather than the mystery of who this girl is that broke our young hero's heart.

On the comedy side, the show displays incredibly weak writing in this area as well. Many, many times throughout the show I honestly had no idea if I was supposed to laugh or take the scene seriously. And I'm not the only person I know who had the same reaction. There's this one scene in particular where Kaz brings a giant Toblerone candy bar to another character as a get well gift. The two have an argument and he ends the conversation by saying “You don't deserve this big Toblerone.” Was that a joke? Is product placement this blatant supposed to be funny? Do people actually talk like this?

The answers to all of those are no.

On top of the weak writing, you have both incredibly weak animation the likes of which we don't really get these days, because anime left the unpolished low budget sheen of the early-mid aughts back where it belongs: the early-mid aughts. As well as tough line delivery from well-known actors doing the best they can with what they got on top of a lead actor who needs more voice acting lessons. Or better directing.

I'm going to discuss Jaden Smith's depiction of Kaz Kaan for a moment. As the main character, he's the one we follow around the most and the one we're rooting for. So what you hope for is a nuanced, well developed, three-dimensional character that changes over time and for an actor who can carry that kind of weight.

Kaz Kaan is written like if Jaden Smith was literally animated. From his twitter feed dialogue to his penchant for appearing cultured through knowledge of expensive brands and classical music. Not to say Jaden isn't cultured as a person, but this is literally how the character comes across. The way Jaden portrays him is as if the person themselves were having these adventures and, unfortunately, that's not a natural fit.

Hadoukaaaaan!!

Literally in Jaden's line delivery alone all I could think throughout the anime is “No one actually talks like that. Jaden probably does. But that's not going to make me like this character. Now if he delivered more natural inflections, pauses, and just... real emotion here and there I could buy some of the heavy-handed dialogue. But it never sounds natural, no matter what Kaz is saying that people would or would not say in a real conversation. And that lack of voice acting lessons and/or better direction from people in the editing room hearing all of this and going “That's good enough” makes for a weak experience following this kid around. People complain about the lack of actual fighting skill in Iron Fist, at least those scenes are few and far between. Take that logic and apply it to what Jaden should have been given but wasn't in prep for this role and you got waaay more to feel upset about if you find yourself wanting to like this show.

Neo Yokio also has weak world building where tropes exist, because it's just another reference they can throw in rather than actually fleshing out certain aspects in a way that make them interesting. There are weak and blatant references to both Sailor Moon and Ranma ½ as alluded to earlier and I would find myself enjoying those more if they were written in more clever ways. There's an entire surprise subplot about Jude Law's mecha butler character that is introduced and, though is used in interesting ways later, we never get to actually flesh out how that effects this world.

Neo Yokio itself is one made up place combining the name of two huge cities though really only updating one of them – there are really not many actual aspects of Tokyo in Neo Yokio – awe also get the name drop of another place known as North Cackalacka (North Carolina). But all the other cities name dropped are real cities/states that exist (Los Angeles and New Jersey) and I simply wish this series would have committed to full on making this world its own made-up thing, rather than resorting to only certain parts of this world being unique and original to it.​

We don't deserve it

Much of my disdain for Neo Yokio as a show is that it never fully commits to one thing enough to make that thing good. Instead opting to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the mix and hoping we latch on because it reminds us of something we've seen before. I would like to know if I'm watching a comedy with dramatic elements or a drama with comedic elements. I would like to listen to people talk like people rather than caricatures of themselves. I would like to know that these producers and Koenig understand why we anime fans like anime in the first place: It's not simply because of the references or the over the top narratives that can sometimes make no sense. It's because of the wide range of stories that are told within the medium and that there are so many characters we can relate to on basic human levels, even when these fantastical elements are on display.

Like any good story, we can laugh and cry with them, for them, or at them and still find the characters endearing no matter their social status or place in the world. But like a wise man once said, “You don't deserve a big Toblerone.” And as North America in general continues to make works of fiction based on a culture or culturally different series and fail to understand why that thing works in the first place no, I don't believe we deserve a big Toblerone.

Final Score: 1.5 Eligible Bachelors out of 5

P.S.: I know I didn't touch on Kaz Kaan's demon-slaying side gig. To be perfectly honest, talking about it or not talking about it doesn't really change the point of this review. I felt it was fun at times but underwritten like the rest of the show.

Have you checked out Netflix's Neo Yokio? What are you going to get people you don't like for Christmas if not a Toblerone? Let us know in the comments!